The subject matter disclosed herein relates to a bicycle and in particular to a bicycle having a unitary steerer tube-crown-fork assembly.
Bicycles, such as mountain bicycles and all-terrain bicycles encounter a variety of terrains and environmental conditions during operation. Therefore, components used in bicycles need to withstand impacts caused by bumps, rocks, holes and the like. This results in the components being made from strong materials to avoid damage. However, other factors, such as weight for example, may also determine material selection since a lighter bicycle makes less of an impact on the riders endurance.
To accommodate these factors, tradeoffs are made in the selection of material and design of components. It may be desirable to have a component that absorb energy, such as the front fork assembly for example, be made from high strength steel. However, it may be undesirable to incur the additional weight of a steel component. To achieve a high strength and low weight fork assembly, composite materials, such as carbon composites for example, have been proposed. While forks made from these materials perform well, they tend to be expensive to manufacture. Further, while composite materials are strong, they are also less elastic than traditional metal materials. As a result, higher performing composite materials are used, which further increases the cost.
Bicycles include a number of subassemblies, such as the front steerer tube-fork or the crank-spindle assemblies for example. Each of these subassemblies is typically composed of a number of components. For example, the front fork assembly includes a steerer tube, a crown, and one or more suspension forks. While the fabricating individual components may be desirable to allow flexibility in material selection and design of the components, it does adversely impact the manufacturing costs of the bicycle.
Accordingly, while existing bicycles are suitable for their intended purposes, there remains a need for improvements, particularly in the manufacturing of unitary components to reduce the number of components while maintaining desired performance.